1,000 Miles and Counting Them All: IronButt Bound!

(I always get a kick out of RRBMWR members who talk about riding 1,000 miles in one day ‘for fun.’ That would be like going to the dentist ‘for fun’ or to the proctologist for….well, you get my drift. Thank heavens our little club is make up with all kinds of interesting people, even some whose definition of ‘fun’ seems a little odd.~Ed.)



By Dan Weber
Early on May 8th four members of the RRBMWR embarked on a one day/1000 mile trip completely within the borders of Louisiana. Dan put the trip together and Kim, Jim, and Don made up the rest of the foursome. The goal was to earn an IronButt Association SaddleSore 1000 award. AT 3:30am we started down I-49. As we got near the Mansfield exit we began seeing cloud to cloud lightning. This persisted until a couple miles from the Natchitoches exit when we ran into some rain. We pulled off for the shelter of a Texaco overhang and sought guidance from the all-knowing smartphone. Luck was with us, no more rain then or for the remainder of the day.

We gassed up in Opelousas and headed west on two- lane roads bound for the western-most exit on I-10. That leg went well until we faced a HOUSE coming the other way. We gassed up after letting the house pass and headed into blustery winds until well south of Baton Rouge on I-10. At the next gas stop Kim discovered that his rear tire had lost half its air. He found three different pieces of steel (one nail and one or two staples) in the tire but we convinced him that it was probably a very slow leak and if he added air to the tire he might be OK for the remainder of the trip. We did feel like Boy Scouts, we had two emergency air pumps along plus a questionable sticky rope plugger. Lucky for Kim, he didn't need any additional air for the remaining 500 miles of the trip. Lesson learned; it's easy to pull a nail out of your tire but having done so it's probably harder to put it back in.

We took I-10 through New Orleans and past Slidell. After a few miles on I-59 we 2-laned it to Bogalusa. From there we were on back roads to St. Francisville. The Florida parishes are quite scenic. This leg was really pleasant even though we were just a few minutes late for the Mississippi River ferry. Oh well, it came back and we soon were on the west side of the river. After more gas, this time in Morganza, we took LA15 along the river up to Ferriday and then on to Tallulah for yet more gas.

A note on all these gas stops. The IronButt organization verifies rides by comparing your claimed route and mileage against the location and date stamps on gas receipts. In our case of travelling completely within the state we have to "mark" the physical borders of our travel by gas tickets. In all, we each had 8 gas receipts. On leaving Tallulah it became dark and really busy on I-20. We stayed together until stopping in Arcadia, Don got his final gas receipt and we all congratulated each other on a task well done. The remaining three of us finished the trip in Shreveport. I got my last gas receipt at 10:30pm, 17 hours after starting out with the guys.

I have some ideas for future trips, wanna hear them?